[extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 02:01:36AM +0000, pietro ferri wrote:
> 
> Exaclty! My point is to state that you profoundly diagree with Ray's 
> timeline predictions because, in your own words, science is radically 
> unpredictable. But when one reads Ray's books one gets the feeling that 

Futurology has never been an exact science. Even if we're speaking about
science: which natural phenomena can we predict? Planetary orbits, on the
short run. They disintegrate into chaos on the long run. Development of
stars, roughly. The product of forecast precision and temporal depth tends to have
pretty small, constant values even for such well-behaved systems. 

Humans are very nonlinear systems. Large assemblies of humans sometimes appear to
operate in the predictable regime, but when exactly can be only determined
via hindsight. Progress depends on a chain of inventions, so it's a
multiple-event forecast, where each even influences the subsequent ones. Even
worse, the breakthroughs have a tendency to come from unexpected places,
completely ruining your neat plans and plots. 

A rational futurologist must admit his defeat.

> future science/technology IS predictable, or at the very least broadly 
> predictable.

Don't you have the feeling that words "one gets the feeling" and
"predictable" do not quite mix? It is frequently quite amusing to study
forecasts from 1980s, and those from 1950s are outright hilarious. In a world
with an increasing rate of change the horizont is increasingly shrinking. 
I would be very careful trying to forecast 2013, 2023 is way, way out of
reach already except in very rough outlines (population, energy budget, etc.;
all of these can still be changed by something dramatic and unexpected).
 
> >I'm not a critic of strong AI, quite the reverse. I have no argument with
> >Ray in that respect.
> 
> Well, I just wanted to make the point that Ray likes to publicly debate 
> with his critics, whether it be about AI , His "Laws" or whatever. o, why 

Ray Kurzweil is not original. He does good work in publicising the ideas,
though. I have at times problems with his style, but that's a personal
opinion. (Young Chang makes damn good instruments, though. Does anyone know
a better budget stage piano than SP88X? I'm hearing the samples are good, but
not great. I'm looking for possible alternatives). 

> don't you debate about the "Law" direclty with him? I am sure that it would 
> be of great interest to every extropian!

I'm not at all sure that would be the case.
 
> >`?The Singularity is Near? is Not That Near' :)
> 
> Maybe next week? :-)

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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